At least 30,000 officers have walked off the job, demanding higher wages, better working conditions and the resignation of top officials.

Mostafa Hussein, 47, is a Cairo traffic police officer who, like thousands of low-ranking police, is on strike for higher wages and better working conditions. He's picutred at a police protest in front of the Interior Ministry in Cairo.

By:Sandro ContentaStaff Reporter, Published on Tue Oct 25 2011

CAIRO—Members of Egypt’s hated police force are looking for a little understanding.

At least 30,000 of them have walked off the job, demanding higher wages, better working conditions and the resignation of the Interior Ministry’s top officials.

It’s not a group that attracts public sympathy. But Cairo traffic cop Mostafa Hussein thinks an honest confession might help.

“It’s true, we were hard on people,” says Hussein, 47, standing among thousands of police protesting in front of the ministry Tuesday. “It’s also true we asked for bribes — but why?

Police were particularly abusive during the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, the authoritarian president overthrown by massive street protests last February. Since then, bribes have largely dried up, and low-ranking police are finding it hard to survive on salaries of no more than $100 a month.

“A normal person, married with children — how can he survive on that money,” says Hussein, explaining why police constantly demanded bribes. “What else can I do?”

Egypt’s Tahrir TV channel reported Tuesday that 6,600 low-ranking police have been convicted of crimes, often bribery or theft, in the past 10 years.

Hussein, who has two wives and six children, is on a committee of 30 people coordinating strikes by police in three cities, including Cairo. He intervened to allow the Star access to the protest site after strikers at barricades down the street insisted that foreign journalists were banned.

On the ministry’s large glass door, striking police plastered a sign that read, “Closed for renovations. Getting rid of corruption.” On a roof across the street, a striker with a microphone stood with others near loudspeakers and led a chant of, “Go away.”

Mubarak’s notorious interior minister, Habib al-Adly, has been convicted of money laundering. He’s also being tried on charges of ordering the killing of hundreds of pro-democracy protesters during revolts that began Jan. 25. But striking police say at least a dozen of Adly’s deputies are still running the ministry, and the new minister, Mansour al-Essawy, is letting them have their way. They want all of them, including the minister, to resign.

Those on strike are the lowest ranking of an estimated 350,000 police in Egypt. If their demands aren’t met, Hussein said strike actions will escalate. Police will be pulled off night patrol and security won’t be provided for elections in late November, the initial round of voting for Egypt’s first post-revolution parliament.

The last time police withdrew their services was during the January and February revolts, when citizens had to set up local militias to protect their neighbourhoods. They slowly reappeared after Mubarak was ousted, but many Egyptians accuse them of not doing their jobs and blame them for what they insist is a sharply increasing crime rate.

Hussein blamed that, too, on remnants of Mubarak’s old guard at the ministry.

“The order we got from the Interior Ministry is to avoid any tension, and not be in direct contact with people. That’s why we’re not doing our jobs,” Hussein said. “If they let us do our jobs, we’d get rid of (Cairo’s) thugs in a day.”

Labour unrest has been the most visible result of Mubarak’s fall. Street protests for higher wages are a daily occurrence in Cairo. An estimated 40 per cent of Egyptians live on less that $2 a day.